


None So Blind

by Mithen



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Canon-Based, Death in the Family, Death of Superman, Knightfall, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-03
Updated: 2010-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-09 07:08:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Superman finds himself soul-bonded to a lawless vigilante, he responds by avoiding the Dark Knight as much as possible and refusing to even become friends with him.  But events have a way of proving hasty judgments wrong...</p>
            </blockquote>





	None So Blind

_ There are none so blind as those who will not see. _

The first time Superman saw Batman, he knew that he could never love another.

Unfortunately, he also knew he could never even _like_ Batman, much less _love_ him.

He felt the Kryptonian soul-bond between him and the man crouched on the Gotham rooftop unfurl like nightshade blossoms, beautiful and irresistible and poisonous. Nothing he had read of the bond in Kryptonian science and song had prepared him for the weight of it, the certainty. There would never be another mate for him, another person with whom he could feel this connection. It was Fate, it was Destiny.

It was entirely unwelcome.

Batman glowered up at him. Superman could only see the lower half of his face, but there was no expression on it beyond dislike and distrust. The Dark Knight was entirely untouched by the bond, of course. Kal had always assumed it was impossible for a Kryptonian to establish it with a human, but apparently it was simply a one-way connection. He almost snarled with fury that his cursed genetics would tie him to an enemy, an amoral vigilante.

Batman was saying something about a force-field that would trigger something if Superman touched him, and Kal realized he had a hand out as if to run a finger along that clenched jawline. "If you break the force-field, a bomb will go off and an innocent will die," Batman rasped.

Superman pulled his hand back as if it Batman were radioactive, alarm and revulsion going through him. "What kind of inhuman monster are you?" he heard himself say. He curled his hand into a fist. The only way he'd ever touch this man would be to pound that smug look off his face.

Batman shrugged and made some casual answer. Later, Superman would be almost more appalled to learn that the bomb had been wired to Batman himself. How could the man have been so nonchalant, knowing that if Superman simply touched him he would die? One touch...

The fact that Batman had, in essence, trusted Superman with his life gnawed at Clark, somehow. It didn't seem right.

**: : :**

The bond was always there, a small thing, as small as breathing or sleep. When they were apart, Clark could feel it stretch between them like a tether of scathing light, blue-white, pulling off unerringly toward the other half of his soul. Every time he saw Batman he could feel it, a _click_ like a puzzle piece falling into place, or the latch on his heart falling shut again. _Click._

He never let it show on his face, kept his voice brisk and businesslike. Luckily his damned emotional instinct was countered by everything unpleasant about the man: he was callous, he cared nothing for other people. He saw others only as means to the end of his Mission. Oh, he was brilliant without a doubt, ingenious and driven and focused and determined to make the world a better place. But he was distant, colder than permafrost. He didn't seem capable of warmth, of affection. Superman could see it in the detached way Batman treated him, like he was a handy tool to be sent into battle, a fulcrum--or a bludgeon--to be used when necessary.

If Bruce Wayne was the only person Kal-El would ever be capable of loving, then Kal-El would simply learn to live without love.

**: : :**

The Mediterranean sun was sizzling around them, rising in excruciating waves off Batman's dark cowl and cape. It made the man in the cowl seem to be radiating fury, so intense that Clark could nearly feel it against his skin, parching him. Dizziness spun the desert scenery in looping arcs. He couldn't think straight, couldn't focus. What was going on?

"You can't do anything, Batman," he explained, trying to keep his voice level as nausea gripped him. He wanted to double over, to fold in around the sick feeling in his gut, but he stood straight and glared at Batman. The invisible silver tether between them was crackling with heat, snapping like a Tesla coil.

"Who's the ambassador?" Batman's voice was so raw and rasping Clark could barely understand the words.

"He has diplomatic immunity, Batman. Go home."

Batman's glare stabbed through the miasma fogging Clark. "Who is he? _Who?_" At the last word, he lurched forward without warning and swung a fist at Superman with all his might.

Shocked, unprepared, sick to his very marrow, Clark barely managed to pull back enough that Bruce's hand wouldn't be shattered. He felt the glove connect with his chin--

\--And at the touch a wave of emotion poured over Clark like filthy, turbulent water. Rage, horror, remorse and self-loathing battered him like blows, a churning agony of inchoate despair: _Dead, dead, dead in my arms, the scent of his blood on me, my boy, his bones shattered, limp in my arms as a broken doll, my fault--my fault--_ In that timeless, shaken moment, images imploded in Clark's heart: debris and the smell of burning and blood, a limp arm and a scrap of bright cape. Other images: a spill of red hair and a body tumbled to the ground, bent in two by the force of a bullet, a sound of splintering bone loud as a cannon, a roar of blood in his ears. _It should have been me, it should always have been me, all this suffering is my doing, my selfishness, mine--_

It was coming from Bruce, Clark realized as he struggled to stay upright, fought to keep from falling to his knees and howling. The nausea and self-hated, the sickened black abhorrence that beat on him like desert heat, it was Bruce's. Bruce, who was holding his own hand and wincing from the impact with Superman's face.

Clark had Bruce's hand in his without even thinking, ignoring the fresh deluge of pain and repugnance--it wasn't aimed at him, Bruce hardly even seemed to notice his touch. A quick x-ray revealed nothing broken. Nothing physical. The psychic assault continued, but Clark found he could weather it better knowing what it was. It tossed him like a small boat on a high sea, anguish lashing him like spray. And under the anguish, under the pain, Clark could feel the vast depths of emotion from which the agony sprang, the nearly-unfathomable surge of it.

How could he have ever thought the man uncaring?

He realized that Batman was looking at him oddly, realized he was still clinging to the man's hand as if to a lifeline. He let go of it and the emotions narrowed slightly to a mere river of grief and anger.

"He has diplomatic immunity," Clark said, the words sounding hollow and feeble in his ears.

"To hell with immunity. To hell with all of it." Bruce's voice sounded like it had been scraped from his throat, and Clark realized it was raw with tears and screams. He hadn't heard it before. "I'm stopping him, Superman, and you'd better not get in my way."

He turned and strode off, heat shimmering around him like a halo of pain. Clark watched him go, the unseen silver filament between them growing ever finer, and thought about duty, and death, and family, and how easy it was to misjudge a man.

**: : :**

Superman held out the small lead box. "The Kryptonite!" Batman said, staring at it. After a moment, he raised his eyes to meet Superman's. "Do you realize what you're asking?"

His face was almost expressionless, and Clark felt nothing through the link, but he could see traces of self-doubt and hesitation in the set of Bruce's jaw, the furrow of his cowled brow. It was easy to see them if you knew where to look--and if you weren't blinded by ego and prejudice.

"Of course I do," Superman said, lifting the box slightly. "I want the means to stop me to be in the hands of a man I can trust with my life."

After a moment, Batman reached out and took the box. His gloved fingers brushed Clark's palm and Clark felt a faint echo of puzzlement, a taste of trepidation. No triumph, no satisfaction. He half-expected Batman would raise the cover to check on the stone and braced himself against the pain of the green light, but Bruce merely looked at the heavy gray box in his hand as if at a particularly recalcitrant clue.

"Thank you," whispered Clark, then left the cave before he could say anything else. Sometimes he was tempted to try and have an actual conversation with Batman--one that didn't revolve around who to save and who to hit, that was. He found himself curious about Bruce's life. Did he have much time to read and if so, what kind of books did he like? What did he like to eat? Did he have a favorite sports team? But whenever he tried he found himself awkward and stiff and formal. The psychic bond Bruce couldn't see shivered in the air between them, reminding Clark always that he would never love anyone else. It made him self-conscious and cold, and all his conversations with Batman had an uncomfortable edge to them that he couldn't seem to banish. He had wasted so much time hating Batman that it seemed ludicrous now to want to be his friend.

It was too late, really, he thought as he sailed back to the Fortress of Solitude. Far too late for any of that, and no use regretting it.

And then one day it truly was too late.

**: : :**

A spiked fist sank into Superman's stomach. He felt something tear inside of him, a deep rending that left him retching for breath. He gasped for air and felt the breath gurgle soddenly in his lungs. Bad. This was bad.

Doomsday looked almost as bad as he did, though. And there was no way that monster was walking away from this fight and leaving him behind. He hammered at the reptilian face with all his might and felt it give before him, felt bones cracking. There was a moment of satisfaction that ended as soon as Doomsday's fist connected with his face. Teeth shattered and fresh blood filled his mouth, mingling with the blood in his breath. He could hardly see, but plunged forward to drive Doomsday into the ground, a desperate pile-driver that knocked the wind out of him as well. His knees gave way and he sank to the ground, choking on the concrete dust filling the air.

There was a strange, vast silence all around him. Then footsteps. Voices. He struggled to stand, to fight. He couldn't. He was still pushing ineffectually at the ground when Lois emerged from the smoke and fell to her knees before him. "Superman," she said, her voice raw.

"Is it...is it..."

"It's over," she said.

He closed his eyes and let the cool air sweep over him. He could hear Jimmy and Lois talking, but couldn't make out what they were saying anymore. They sounded like they were weeping. There seemed to be many people weeping nearby. He wished suddenly, the thought swooping out of nowhere, that Bruce were there. He'd make some kind of sarcastic comment, would ignore the fact that Superman was dying--

He stopped. The last words hung in his mind, an echo.

Superman was dying.

Clark Kent was dying.

_I am dying._

He tried to open his eyes and failed. There was still so much to do, so much he needed to do. He tried to take a breath and realized he couldn't. He wasn't breathing anymore.

Even with his eyes closed, he could see the silver strand, the bond between him and Bruce, pulling away toward Gotham, far away. So far away.

The silver light frayed into fragments and was gone.

**: : :**

A long time of darkness. Alone.

**: : :**

The first thing he noticed when he opened his eyes and found himself in the Fortress of Solitude, impossibly alive, was that the bond was gone. There was no tether around his heart, no binding on his soul. Death had snapped it, severed it. He took a deep breath of cold air, then another. Nothing. He was free.

For some reason the emotion that swept over him was closer to desolation than relief.

It took weeks until he could recover enough to wear the costume again, and by then he had gotten used to being unable to sense Bruce's presence, more or less. But he had to test it, find out for sure.

So here he stood on the roof of the Gotham police department, explaining to Commissioner Gordon the trumped-up reason he had to summon Batman.

When the dark wings whispered out of the night sky, Clark braced himself for that _click_ to reassert itself, but there was nothing. By the time the Dark Knight landed on the rooftop, however, Superman knew the man in front of him wasn't Bruce Wayne at all. The stance was all wrong, the posture, the voice. All wrong.

All wrong!

He hid his shock and dawning horror. If that wasn't Bruce, then perhaps the bond was gone because--

Because--

He had to find Bruce.

The Commissioner looked at him blandly as the impostor swung away, all claws and glinting malice. Gordon either hadn't noticed the change or was not going to let on to Superman that he had.

Superman took to the sky that didn't seem to hold him as well or securely as it had just moments before.

Where was Bruce?

**: : :**

The new kid, the third Robin, was no help. He looked Superman right in the eye and told him Bruce was doing fine, Batman was fine, and there was nothing to worry about. "He'll be pleased to hear you're back, Superman. I'll tell him next time I see him." He was lying, of course, Clark could tell that even without hearing his heartbeat and blood pressure. But Superman wasn't going to shake answers out of a stubborn child. Besides, Clark found himself impressed by this newest Robin's cool. Let him keep Bruce's secrets, that's what Robins were for.

He wasn't sure where Dick was now, and besides that Dick was a Robin too, in all the ways that mattered.

So now he stood in the light of a dozen or more computer screens, waiting for the Oracle to speak.

She wheeled her chair around and looked at him, a long and measuring look. "Everything's fine with Batman, Kal-El."

He took a long breath, let it out. "Is Bruce dead?" The question came out rough and cruel, but the shock on her face was answer enough to leave him feeling weak with relief. "I need to find him, Barbara. I need to see that he's okay with my own eyes."

She looked down. "He's not okay, though," she said, very low.

He clasped his hands together behind his back to stop them from shaking. "Please. Tell me."

She told him.

There were tears in her eyes when she was done. Clark could feel his nails digging into his palms behind his back. "What's the prognosis?" He was surprised at how collected his voice sounded.

"He's out of danger. Healing. But...he may never walk again."

The words were ice-cold water. "No. Not him." He stopped, met her eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean--"

She shook her head ruefully and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "That's all right. It's a terrible thing." She turned her chair slightly and watched the data slide and coruscate on the monitors in silence. Clark stared at them too, his eyes burning, lost in visions of Batman shattered and broken, lost in a hospital bed, bound to a chair, his restless energy quenched. He glanced back at Barbara to realize that she was watching him, tapping a finger on her mouth absently, frowning in concentration. She nodded slightly to herself and said, "He needs a friend."

He meant his laugh to sound scoffing, but it came out bitter. "I'm hardly that, Barbara. We were never close."

"He's a hard man to get close to," Barbara agreed.

"It's not that." Regret made his words sharp. "I never gave us a chance. I was stubborn, willful--I refused to see him as he was because it was...safer that way." His voice faltered and faded. He didn't want to be safe anymore.

Barbara was smiling faintly. "You're very alike in some ways." She turned and jotted something on a piece of paper, handed it to him: an address written in a precise, slanted hand. An address in England. "Go to him, Kal."

Clark stared at the square of paper in his hand. "He won't want to see me. He despises me."

She lifted her chin and her eyes sparked. "If you believe that, then you truly don't know him at all." She went on, more gently: "You've _returned from the dead,_ Superman. Isn't it time you allowed yourself the luxury of a second chance?"

The scrap of paper fluttered in his hand as he flew over the ocean. No band of light, no silver thread pulling him, only a fragment of paper and a sadness and a hope.

**: : :**

Wisps of mist shifted past Superman's eyes as he hovered at the edge of a bank of fog, looking at the penthouse where Bruce Wayne was staying. Clark felt suddenly uncertain--should he show up as Clark or Superman? Or, a nagging voice inside him insisted on suggesting, should he turn around and head right back across the ocean?

As he was debating with himself, the veranda doors opened and Alfred pushed a wheelchair out onto the patio.

Alfred's mouth was drawn into annoyed lines, but his brow was creased with worry. Clark watched it closely, focusing on his expression. He couldn't look at the figure in the chair. Not yet.

"There's nothing out here to see but fog, Alfred," said a deep voice. Clark had always described Bruce's voice as "dark," but now he realized it had been the dark of a night sky shot through with stars, or the dark of velvet with a sheen of light shivering across it. Now it was merely lightless and heavy.

"Nonetheless, sir, the fresh air will do you good." Alfred moved around, adjusting blankets. Clark watched his hands move on the fabric.

"There's nothing to see," Bruce repeated fretfully.

"Get some rest, sir," said Alfred. "You don't sleep well enough."

Clark watched him open the veranda door and disappear once more into the penthouse.

Only then did he look at the man in the wheelchair.

There was no _click_, no latch swinging shut in his heart. Clark felt nothing.

No. He didn't feel the old resented bond, but he felt many things, more than he could seem to sort out. The most immediate was the sense of _wrongness_ he felt, looking at Bruce. There was something indefinably but terribly wrong about him, something that made Clark's throat tighten alarmingly. It wasn't his face--that was drawn and tired, with hints of fresh pain engraved around his mouth, but not noticeably changed. Clark waited in the fog, watching, trying to figure out what was causing his heart to hurt and his hands to shake like this.

Bruce sat unmoving, staring at the fog. So still. Clark had never seen Batman so inert--even when he was perfectly motionless, it was the stillness of a predator, waiting for something with a fixed intensity. Now it was simply as if all the energy had been drained from him, leaving him merely sitting. Not waiting, not planning, not moving forward purposefully in time. Just sitting.

Clark's breath caught painfully, a razor in his throat. He moved out of the fog and into the line of Bruce's sight, intersecting his lusterless gaze. "Bruce," he said.

Bruce raised his eyes and for a long moment simply stared at him blankly, his eyes empty. Then emotion surged into them, firing their blue into incandescence.

Fury.

Long, powerful fingers clenched in the blankets like talons, as if they would tear them into shreds. _"You,"_ Bruce hissed. "What the hell are _you_ doing here? After what you did to me?" Superman hovered aghast, stripped of words, as Bruce continued, his whole body shaking: "You don't even know, do you? I never let on, I wasn't going to give you the _satisfaction_ of knowing how you'd bound me and tied me to you with your damn alien soul--I could tell, you never felt a thing. Not like I did." He took a deep, harsh breath, shaking his head as if at a nightmare memory. "I hated you so much," he seethed at the man hovering in the misty sky. "And I held onto that hatred and it made me _strong_, it held me up when I wanted to _like_ you, wanted to _trust_ you. I knew better, knew I would never give up, never give in to your charm and your kindness and your damn beautiful smile--" His hands grabbed the arms of the wheelchair so hard they might have left dents. Another deep breath that broke at the end into something else. "And then you were _gone_, you were _dead_, and I had no hatred left and no anger left, there was _nothing left!"_ Shaking with rage, he pushed himself out of the chair and staggered toward the edge of the veranda as if he would hurl himself at Superman: one step, then two. A third. Pain wrenched his face. "Nothing left," he whispered, his knees buckling. "Nothing."

Clark caught him as he fell forward.

Bruce was solid and real in his arms, tremors shaking his body uncontrolled as he leaned against him. "You died," he said, his voice lorn. "And it was too late for everything."

"It's not too late," Clark said into Bruce's hair.

As if the words had triggered it, Bruce's knees gave out entirely. Clark swept him up into his arms. He expected Bruce to protest the indignity, but Bruce merely leaned hard against his chest and rested his head on Clark's shoulder. He should probably return Bruce to the chair, Clark thought.

He didn't really want to.

He lifted up and away from the penthouse and the ugly wheelchair until they were both lost in the fog, until it was just him and Bruce and pearl-white mist all around them. "You were the last thing I thought of," Clark said. "At the end. I wished you were there."

Bruce's sigh stirred the tendrils of hair around his ears. "I felt the silver thread disappear," he said, as quiet as the mist. "And I knew you were dead." He shook his head slightly, the motion brushing his cheek against Clark's neck; Clark felt the faint rasp of stubble. "You never knew about the bond. I should have told you. It was--"

"--When you first saw me," Clark finished. "Like a latch, locking your heart shut forever."

A very long silence. "You never showed it," Bruce said. "You seemed...untouched."

"Too proud. Too stubborn. I didn't want you to know. I was blinded by resentment and refused to...truly see you."

This time a faint, bitter chuckle brushed Clark's earlobe, making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. "We've wasted so much time."

"Someone told me coming back from the dead is a good time for second chances," Clark said. The mist swirled around them, waiting. Clark held Bruce, both of them unmoving. Both waiting and poised in silence.

"Put me down," Bruce said brusquely. "Not back on the damn chair," he added as Clark started to move back toward the penthouse. "There's a beach to the west. Put me down there."

The sand was cool and shifting as Superman's feet touched it. The beach was blanketed in white fog, deserted. Clark started to swing Bruce down, and Bruce's arms tightened around his neck like a warning. Clark paused.

"I want to take my first steps by your side," Bruce said.

Then he put his legs down onto the sand, standing very carefully, leaning heavily on Clark.

They took one step together, then two. Another. Sweat beaded Bruce's brow, but he kept going, step by cautious step.

After fifteen steps, he stopped and took a deep breath, resting his weight against Clark. He looked out at the twining fog, the unseen ocean hiding behind it. "I could never bring myself to touch you, because when I did, I could...tell what you were feeling. It was unnerving." His hand tightened on Clark's shoulder; two fingers slipped from the cloth to bare skin, pressing like a question. "Now I find it unnerving to _not_ know what you're feeling."

"Do you really not know what I'm feeling?"

"Of course not," Bruce snapped, still looking away from Clark. His cheeks were slightly flushed--with exertion, he would surely say if Clark asked.

"Really?"

"I _said_\--" Bruce swung to face Clark and seemed startled to find their faces just a few inches apart. Clark watched the subtle play of emotions across the aristocratic planes and angles of Bruce's face, the flutter from annoyance to curiosity, to something close to anticipation. "I can't," he said slowly. "Not the same way. You know that."

"Then it will be quite an adventure, won't it?"

A smile was tugging at the corner of Bruce's mouth, nearly overcoming the carefully arranged puzzlement of the rest of his face. "What will?"

"This."

Bruce's mouth was mist-cold, the kiss as tentative as fog. Clark started to pull back, but Bruce grabbed his head almost roughly, leaning against him, and hauled him back. No maelstrom of emotion opened up between them, no link, no bond: just teeth and tongues and breath, just a kiss. More than anyone would ever need, Clark thought disjointedly. It stopped only when Bruce staggered in the sand and they both nearly fell over. Clark had to hover for a moment to regain his balance, then brought Bruce's feet gently back down to the ground so they could stand together. Bruce wrapped his arms around Clark and held on tight, breathing hard against Clark's neck, as if he had run a long race and had finally seen the finish line.

"Well," he murmured after a while, his lips moving against Clark's skin. "You know I live for adventure."


End file.
